Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)

Services

Our physicians work together throughout your pregnancy and delivery to ensure the best possible outcome for your baby. Many issues can be diagnosed during your pregnancy by our Maternal-Fetal Medicine physicians who care for high-risk moms prior to birth and diagnose babies in-utero. They work closely with NICU physicians to develop care plans, especially for newborns with cardiac issues.

Our services include a full range of surgical capabilities by pediatric subspecialists on staff, including cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, gastroenterology and orthopedic surgery. We also offer the following support services:

Occupational and physical therapy — therapists round on every baby every day.

NICU registered dieticians — round every day on every baby, monitoring weight, electrolytes, and caloric intake - making recommendations to physicians.

Onsite breastfeeding and feeding clinic with donor milk available to supplement mom's milk if needed.

Child LifeChild Life therapists work with babies on developmentally appropriate activities to make sure they don't fall behind. They work with our nurses on ways to calm and comfort babies, relieving pain without chemicals and medications by sharing techniques such as touch therapy, swaddling and positioning to mimic being in the womb, and "sweeties" (sugar water syrup) instead of medication. They are also available to work with your baby's siblings.Kangaroo care
Our family-centered care model encourages a technique of skin-to-skin contact between newborns and their parents called kangaroo care. We want your child to feel mom and dad's heartbeat firsthand. After birth we immediately place your newborn on mom's chest even if your child is too tiny to breastfeed. Our goal is to re-create, as much as possible, a normal home environment where parents would be cuddling their baby.

Pediatric pharmacyRandall Children's Hospital has an onsite pharmacy with pediatric pharmacists. Medication delivery response times are very fast, allowing the unit to meet, and at times exceed, quality benchmarks such as newborns getting antibiotics within the first hour after birth. It also decreases the chances for errors.Emotional/spiritual support
We offer emotional, social and spiritual support for families with a newborn in one of our NICUs. Our support includes the services of a chaplain, social worker, dieticians, case managers, and lactation and feeding specialists.

ECMO/gentle ventilation
Randall Children's Hospital offers a treatment called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, for all ages — from newborn to adult. ECMO is a complicated technology that oxygenates blood outside the body when the lungs aren't working. We've won international recognition for our use of ECMO.

In many infant cases, Randall Children's Hospital uses "gentle ventilation," a newer approach that approximates normal infant breathing and reduces the chances of lung injury. We are also a national leader in using gentle ventilation.